1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to printing systems provided with security functions, methods for controlling printing systems, image forming apparatuses, print system controllers, and storage media.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, in business offices, an environment in which one printing apparatus that is connected to a network is shared by a plurality of client computers has been spreading. This is due to increased use of networked business equipment. In such an environment, it is possible that a third party removes or views the outputted printed material without permission. Such a situation becomes a problem in the case of printing while ensuring security. For example, one such situation would include printing of confidential or personal information that should not be seen by a third party.
As a method to solve the above-described problem, a function called “confidential printing” (also referred to as “secure printing”) is known (for example, see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-186657). In confidential printing, a printer driver that transmits a password along with the print job data is installed in advance on a client computer. Then, upon instructing a printing apparatus to perform print processing using this printer driver, the print job data and the password are transmitted to the printer. A printing apparatus that has received the print job data and the password does not start the print process immediately, but temporarily saves the print job data and the password data in a storage medium in the printing apparatus.
When a user wishes to perform printing using the printing apparatus based on the print job data, the user performs the following operations. Initially, utilizing a user interface provided on the printing apparatus, the user causes a print job list, for example, to be displayed on the user interface. Then, the user selects the target print job from the displayed job list and enters a password. Only when the entered password and the password that is stored in the storage medium together with the print job data match, does the printing apparatus start the print process based on the print job data. At this time, since the user is already in front of the printing apparatus, the user can receive the printed confidential documents without the documents being seen or removed by a third party. It should be noted that in the present specification, such a print job for which an authentication process is performed prior to printing is referred to as a “secure print job”.
However, consider the case where, after the print process of a secure print job is actually started on the printing apparatus, the printing apparatus has an “out of paper” event during a secure print job. In such a case, the user may leave the printing apparatus to obtain paper for replenishment. In other words, the possibility that the proper user is absent in front of the printing apparatus for a certain period of time can be foreseen. In such a case, there may arise the possibility that a third party sees the printed materials of the secure print job during the absence of the proper user and the confidentiality of the print data is compromised. As one of countermeasures to the above-described problem, the user of the secure print job may, when the user leaves the printing apparatus to deal with an “out of paper” event or the like, remove the material already printed in order to keep them confidential. However, remaining problems can be anticipated which are difficult to address even with such a countermeasure. For example, if certain finishing processing such as stapling are specified for the secure print job, a new problem that may arise is that the desired finishing processing cannot be performed if the printed materials are removed before the completion of the print process.
In addition, upon recovery from an event such as an “out of paper” event, even if paper for replenishment is prepared near the printing apparatus, a certain period of time is required to perform the recovery process. In this case, the time required from the start of printing of the secure print job to the completion thereof is prolonged by the time taken for performing the recovery process compared with the time required in the case where printing is completed without the recovery processing. In other words, it is anticipated that the printed output of the secure print job is exposed to a higher risk of being seen by a third party in the case where printing of the secure print job is completed with the recovery process, compared to the case where printing of the secure print job can be completed without the recovery process.
Further, it is important to ensure that, in dealing with a problem such as the one described above, other new problems do not arise, thereby reducing productivity. Thus, there still remain problems with regard to secure print jobs.